Girlfriends In Space
by TheStoryFiend
Summary: Clara Oswald's normal life is suddenly interrupted by a beautiful, enigmatic woman named Amy Pond, who sweeps her away in her TARDIS, a "spaceship time machine" of her own invention. (Rated T just in case.)
1. Chapter 1

It had been a perfectly normal day. That is, until the school blew up.

Clara Oswald herded her students out of the classroom. The hallways were full of fire and the air rang with sirens and panicked screams.

"Go to the top of the hill!" she shouted at the kids, pointing. "I'm going back inside to look for more people to help!"

The students took off running in the direction she pointed to, and Clara ran back into the smoke-filled building, pulling her cardigan over her mouth to prevent smoke from getting in her lungs.

"Hello? Hello?" she called, running from classroom to classroom. She could hear children's voices up ahead, but the familiar halls had been transformed into a fiery, smoke-filled labyrinth by the conflagration.

She staggered onward for what seemed like ages, calling for the children she could always hear but never reach. The smoke transformed everyday objects hanging on the walls into a terrifying phantasmagoria. Her head began to swim as her lungs filled with the carbon monoxide in the smoke.

"Is anyone here?" she gasped one more time, staggering, coughing, retching. The world went black.

The first thing Clara noticed as she slowly regained consciousness was an insistent beeping sound. Then she felt the IV.

In a moment of pure panic, she jerked upright, clawing at the white sheets on her, fighting desperately to get out of the bed she was in. The blinding light that filled the room burned her eyes, and she felt like she was drowning in a sea of white.

"Woah, woah, calm down, hero girl," said a redheaded woman around Clara's age who appeared by her side. She wrapped her arms around Clara, restraining her. "Calm down, calm down, it's okay."

The redhead's clasp turned into more of a hug as Clara stopped fighting. The strange woman stroked her long brown hair comfortingly and Clara began to relax.

"Where am I?" she inquired when she was calm, surveying the wide, whote room filled with… well, she could only presume it was medical equipment.

"The medical bay," the woman replied, letting her go and moving to check one of the many scanners in the room.

"Medical bay of _what_, though? Just a minute ago I was in a school," Clara said. The look on the other woman's face as she turned to her made her stomach sink.

"It was just a minute ago, right?" she asked anxiously. "Please don't tell me I've been unconscious for days."

"Not _days_," the redhead rushed to reassure her. "Just - well, a day and a half."

Seeing the horrified look on Clara's face, she hurried on.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "You're on a spaceship that's also a time machine. I can get you back to when you need to be."

"A spaceship time machine?" Clara responded sceptically, crossing her arms and then gasping with pain due to the IV.

"Oh! Sorry! Let me take that out."

The woman proceeded to explain as she worked.

"It's my own invention," she told her. "Well, not completely my own, but when does anyone really ever invent anything truly new? Just about every invention is an improvement on an old idea. In fact, I… um… really got off topic, didn't I." She scratched her head awkwardly and continued. "Anyway, I basically mixed together designs for spaceships and time machines until I got one that could do both. I came up with a name for it the other day. Want to hear?"

Clara remained silent, but the stranger pushed on undeterred.

"TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Bit less bulky than saying spaceship time machine, don't you think?" She didn't give Clara any time to reply before continuing.

"But that's not even the best part! Wanna know what the best part is? The size!"

"How d'you mean?" Clara asked.

"It's really big - on the inside. On the outside, though, it's just a 1930s police telephone telephone box. Genius, right?"

Clara, still sceptical, brushed it aside.

"That's great, but I want to know two things: Who are you, and how did I get here?"

The woman rubbed her neck.

"My name is Amy Pond. Your second question, though… well, ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies."

Clara sat back down on the bed as Amy bandaged her arm. She gave Amy her most stubborn look."

"I'm not moving until you tell me. If, as you say, we're in a time machine, which by the way I'm still not convinced about, I guess I have the time. So spill," Clara told her.

"Well, then." Amy cleared her throat. "Where to start…"


	2. Chapter 2

_Two days before…_

Amy was really quite concerned about the engines. Ever since the rough landing on planet X-248, they sounded a bit… off.

She woke up early that morning to clank around under the grating in the control room. Just as she was soldering two rather fiddly wires together, the alarms went off.

"Bloody hell!" she swore, throwing down her tools and dashing up to check the scanner. "I landed in a nice, quiet place. Would the universe really implode if I had a quiet day for once?"

The TARDIS hummed, as if warning her not to jinx herself. Sometimes she wondered… but no. It was just a machine. It couldn't be sentient. She was just spending too much time in her old blue box alone, that was all.

"Soon as I'm done here, I'll go visit a nice star cluster," she promised herself. "There was that pretty girl on Kalypsastearun. I might drop by there and visit her."

Focusing back on the task at hand, Amy read the information on the scanner, a concerned frown on her face.

"Oh, that is no good," she muttered. "No good indeed."

She heaved a reluctant sigh.

"Well, I guess I'll have to go check this out," she grumbled to her machine. "It's probably best not to let a fire-breathing lizard run loose around the outskirts of London."

The TARDIS landed near a sign for a school - Coal Hill something-or-other, Amy didn't have time to catch the whole thing - just as the fire alarms went off.

"Bloody hell," she said again, snatching her newly enhanced sonic screwdriver she had been using off the console and running outside. At the door nearest her, a young woman with dark hair - probably a teacher - was directing students toward a safety point.

"Go to the top of the hill!" Amy heard her shout as she drew nearer. "I'm going to go back inside and look for more people to help!"

The students took off and Amy started following their young teacher back into the building. Thank heaven she had thought to bring a partial face mask to protect her from the smoke. The woman she was following didn't seem to have done any such thing. She was staggering down the hallway in front of Amy, calling out for students. Amy rushed forward to catch her just as she collapsed.

'_Oh, God. What do I do now?'_ she thought as she cradled the unconscious woman in her arms. She couldn't very well leave her there on the ground - she'd probably burn to death. But if she tried to carry her back to the TARDIS the school would likely be nothing but a cinder when she got back. Finally she pulled another mask from her pockets and put it on the other woman's head, laying her as far away from the flames as she could.

"Be back in a tick," Amy told her, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. Not surprisingly, she didn't react.

Amy made a mad dash down the corridors, tracking the lizard via a handy feature on the screwdriver. She thanked all the gods she had ever heard of in her travels that she had gotten the gadget.

There! It was inside an empty classroom at the end of the hall. Amy could hear its roars of confusion and rage as she ran towards it.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, grabbing a fire extinguisher off the wall. "You aren't going to like this one bit."

She pointed the sonic screwdriver at the door and it burst open, releasing a wave of heat and light that almost knocked Amy over. She scrambled to press the release on the extinguisher.

The roaring ceased abruptly, and when Amy opened her eyes again she saw a winged lizard about the size of a medium dog slumped on the ground, covered in whitish foam.

"Oh, my God. A _dragon,"_ she exclaimed, but she didn't have time to wonder. The source of the flames had been extinguished, true, but the fire was still spreading and that poor girl was probably still lying in the corridor. Amy scooped up the dragon (which was thankfully light) and took off running down the corridor.

The teacher was lying right where Amy had left her, but the flames were getting closer and closer. She scooped her up, throwing her unceremoniously over her shoulder, and escaped the flaming building, heading for the TARDIS. Amy barely had enough time to put the woman in the medical bay and the dragon in one of the spare, fire-proofed rooms, before she too collapsed, overcome by exhaustion and smoke.


End file.
